


Free Records (or the Story of Harvey's Collections)

by Attorney C (arh581958)



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Harvey likes collecting things, Harvey's Collections, Harvey's records, Harvey-centric, Implied Slash, M/M, Mike gives Harvey things (records), prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5177285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arh581958/pseuds/Attorney%20C
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most people think that there were three things that Harvey Specter collected. They were wrong. </p><p>(Or: Harvey notices someone adding to his record anthology)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free Records (or the Story of Harvey's Collections)

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #21 on [1stBonesFan_is_SterekGirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/1stBonesFan_is_SterekGirl/pseuds/1stBonesFan_is_SterekGirl) found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4106725).

The only thing that Harvey actively collected was baseballs; the rest were purely circumstantial.

He started his baseball collection as a kid when he was nine because he wanted to become like Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Ty Cobb, and WIllie Mays. But most of all, he wanted to be Ralph Kiner as a double-threat pitcher-hitter. He was on his way to achieving his childhood dream: win after win in little league, garnering national the national championship title for his High School,  and rode his scholarship to university. All he needed was a signing bonus to be a Pro but an injury on the shoulder during his senior year crushed any hope of joining the major leagues.

He ended up collecting baseballs instead, resigned that he'll never be one of the players signing them. He'd been a smart-mouth cocky young jock in the mailroom when Jessica found him. spent his days venting out his frustration on pieces of junk mail, scowling as he read through the addresses of stuck-up office-drones who grew fat as they climbed the ranks. But he saw something that caught his attention, a piece of mail that prove embezzlement. He thought that he can finally stick one up on them so he barges into Jessica's office and threatens the firm. He gets another scholarship (or patronship) instead.

Now, he signs other things.

Those baseballs were proudly displayed in his office as a reminded what he could have been but never was. It was grounding, the bitter truth, that even if he want far up the legal world, there were things that were beyond his reach. They reminded him that he was still human---able to love and be hurt. It made him want to fight, to succeed, to be stronger.

He signed Micheal Jordan as a retainer to earn his junior partnership. Of course, the basketball start noticed the baseballs sitting on his desk. It was the first thing that Jordan asked him. He was tall, nearly touching the top of the door frame when he entered. The desk was the perfect eye-level to view the meticulously arranged baseballs. Sometimes, during down time, Harvey would shuffled them into a different order---homeruns, steals, batting averages, foul balls, innings played, playing time, etc.

Jordan had caught on. By the end of the 45-minute interview, he'd quizzed Harvey about all of the above with an impressed expression. Then he asked Harvey why he never played. Harvey, hotshot lawyer who had mouth diarrhea, told him all about the jubilant past, the unfortunate incident, and the moment where he was given a second chance. He also took the opportunity to sell the Pearson Hardman brand of trust and loyalty that went beyond the realm of pen and paper.  He didn't sign immediately.

Two days later, a package was waiting for Harvey at his desk. Inside was a signed basket ball and the formal documents of a retainer agreement at the bottom of the pile. Harvey yelled to Donna for a duct tape roll and used it for a makeshift display stand.

Next came the records.

It started easily enough with his dad's old saxophone album when he left home. He had gotten into the habit of listening to it throughout the years---on bad days, when he was in a slum, or just those days when it felt like the world was squeezing around him. He spent an inordinate amount of time listening to the album inside shitty little apartment in Manhattan. He soon climbed the ranks and the first thing he did was move to a better, brighter location in midtown. The women came after, pesky little things that prodded into his personal space.

Annoyed, he brought the turntable and his father's old record albums to the office where the multitudes of women he brought home wouldn't be able to get their oily lotion-coated hands smudging the labels. He initially brought the portable turn-table into his first office as Senior Associate. It was the only personal item, apart from the baseballs, that he brought with him. He signed a small-time record producer who gave him copies of vinyl over time.

Other clients soon followed. After all, what else could they give a lawyer on the rise who clearly already had everything he ever wanted. His record library grew and grew until the day he moved to his new office on the forty-ninth floor. It was only then that he realized how many records were in his music collection. They nearly filled up the entire bookshelf!

There were some records his liked and some that he didn't. When rearranging his baseballs became too mundane of a task for him to do, he tried the bigger challenge of rearranging the vinyl. Another eccentricity was created; good days meant baseball and records meant bad. On particularly grim days, he would reorder them according to his taste, sour-griping over the more abhorrent selections he's been given over the years.

It's the middle of the Hardman take-over attempt when he first notices it---a record from the early 2000's, old and frayed on the edges with an orange discount sticker on the inside. He's never seen this one before but it's right next latest _BlackEyedPeas_ album, following the current alphabetical order. It was peculiar. Then again, so was many of his other client's choices. He thought, initially, that it was dropped off at Donna's desk and his ever-efficient secretary placed it on the shelf for him.

Then it happened again.

And again.

And again.

Mostly after big cases or major wins. There's a new record in his shelf, fitting neatly in the proper place for the arrangement of the week (or month) alongside his old ones. Sometimes there was two or three or four. Other times, and notably richer clients, there was an entire collection from a single artist in limited edition gold or platinum labelled copies delivered to Donna's cubicle and waiting for him on top of his desk the morning. Her script was as elegant as ever with a written name from the sender on her brightly coloured post-it notes. That was his first clue.

What caught Harvey's attention was the fact that there was _another_ new record in his collection when he went and sorted them out that afternoon. He felt like reliving some of his better memories and arranged them according to success rate. He has his own personal coolness scale that he would never admit aloud. It may or may not be according to the amount of paperwork his did for a case; the more things he had to read meant that the lower it is on the scale and the more women he got to sleep with meant higher ratings. It was a solid system.

The Mystery Records, as he dubbed them in his head, were scattered across the cool to not-cool spectrum. It was difficult for him to place some of them. They'd all been after big accounts, huge deals, or brilliant closings but none of them were hard on paperwork nor necessarily meant he got to sleep with someone. Those were the nights that instead of a bar, he found himself in front of his TV with a box of cheese-in-the-crust pizza and a bottle of beer---with Mike.

He decided to test his theory on their ensuing case.

They were both sitting in his office, jackets off and sleeves rolled up to their forearms. Mike has his lips around a highlighter cap, crouched over the coffee table. His eyes were rapidly going from left to right, reading through the document with unbelievable speed one after the after like he was a keyword-search engine personified. It was eleven, nearing midnight. They had two days to stop the in-house hostile takeover of their client's company and a thousand more pages of bi-laws to read.

Harvey stood up to stretch. At this point, coffee, caffeine, or red bull were useless. It makes his less-sharp and more jittery. He wasn't overly fond of being a shaky nervous wreck when combing through organized chaos in search for a smoking gun. He knew just which one would soothe the midnight old and liven up the night.

He pulled out _The Tennessee Fire_ from the shelf and gently puts the disk on the platter, setting the speed to medium. He slid the needle at the edge of the disk then went back to his table. The first song was a medium-paced with a steady upbeat. It's not characteristically his genre of choice but the music was pleasant enough to the ear that he did not _mind_ listening to it. It's livelier than the soft jazz that he favours and they needed something to wake them up.

Mike's eyes met his on the journey back to his table. He sat down, crossed his legs, daring Mike to say something about the choice of music. The younger man merely shrugged it off and went back to his own set of documents, seemingly uncaring for the new noise that filled the space between them.

Harvey had _not_ expected that. He sat, dumbfounded, frozen behind his desk at a loss--for basically everything. What did he expect? A taunt? A jest? A flirty comeback? He shook his head. Since when did he start thinking about Mike that way? He shook his head harder, trying to concentrate despite the boiling sense of uncertainty in his got. He had not read it wrong, had he? There's no way that he misread the entire thing _that_ bad. He---

\---stopped.

He had been caught up in his internal war that he failed to hear the under-toned, slightly off-key, humming in the background. He jerked his head up, wide-eyed, staring in Mike's general direction. Mike's head was lowered as he hunched over a file. It was dim despite the fluorescent white artificial lighting, the best that money (or Jessica) could buy. He saw it like beacon in the middle off the ocean--Mike's was nodding off in-time with the beat while he murmured the lyrics under this breath.

Harvey hid his smirk behind the articles of incorporation.

He asked Donna about the album on the following day.

She plead innocence.

It becomes a habit. On hard cases, they'd stay the night in the office. Harvey would pull a vinyl from the anthology and play something at random from the not-so-Mystery Records. Every time he did, Mike would duck his head and pretend that he was not singing along under his breath. Sometimes, caught in a whirlwind on information, Mike would actually sing out loud unconsciously and Harvey would listen, entertained, at Mike's short-breathed mutterings that were meant to be lyrics.

The next gruelling case was Hessington Oil. They sat in Harvey's office and shared a drink. It's just after Harvey admitted to conspiring with Darby to stage a coup against Jessica for Managing Partner. They have also just conceded to the fact that they were, quite possibly, defending a woman guilty of murdering the locals in order to lay-down her pipeline _after_ paying off the local police with a bribe. It was one disaster to another.

Harvey sorted out his records according to genre; a pattern, though subtle, emerged.

While they were busy unearthing one big surprising mystery after the next, Harvey took the liberty of firing up the turntable once more. It's from the early 2010's, from a bad that he didn't even know existed before he listened to the record. It was too electro-rock for his taste but, again, his tastes were catered more to the restful soul rather than blundering misstep which screwed them over--that was putting it lightly and within general patronage ratings.

Mike sung along for the better part of the hour with a good percentage of lyrical accuracy.

They closed the Hessington Case. They won, sort of. Ava plead guilty to the bribery charge and lost the shares to her company. Harvey and Mike managed to secure a position for her as the CEO for operations. She still has control over Hessington Oil but not majority ownership. It wasn't a loss but it wasn't a win either. Harvey hated the case. Nothing good will come from a personally-invested self-interest.  All wanted was Ava Hessington out of NYC and erased from his more recent memory.

He had not expected any new additions to his collection after the case. Still, two days later, another record from _The Black Keys_ , but this time, it was a single.

His music library continued to grow.

And grow.

And grow.

There was a new way in which Harvey arranged his record collection. He divided them into eras: pre-Mike and post-Mike. The new scale included one Michael James Ross in the equation. It ranked according to the hours spent, pizza's eaten, drinks had, or nights when Mike stayed over in his condo to work. Sometimes, Harvey included _number of sci-fi movies watched_ to his list for the stubborn cases. He'd long stopped counting the women because they've decreased to nearly zero. He never had time when Mike was constantly in his personal space.

On the night before Mike was officially announced at the next Junior Partner, they share a round of congratulatory drinks in Harvey's office. It's late. Most of the people have gone home and the Senior Partner's floor was all but empty. Mike's new office was just down the hall but the younger man doesn't know it yet. Harvey liked that idea that he could lift up his head and see Mike just a few meters away. It saved him time and effort from going up and down the elevator.

They toasted and drank and shared anecdotal references over the experiences they shared inside this tightly confined space.

Harvey plucked out a vinyl. It's the very first one that Mike has ever given him. They haven't talked about it. He hasn't said a word or given any inclination that he knew those albums were from Mike all along. He hinted but never explicitly expressed his theories on the subject matter. They were at a stalemate, a status-quo and neither of them had wanted to change the things between them.

The back of his neck prickled as Mike wordlessly watched him from the couch, arm throw over the back, torso twisting like a pretzel.

Harvey glided his hands over the chaffing thinly laminated surface. He smiled idly when he runs his fingers over the faded orange bump on the inner jacket. He said nothing as he went through the motions of setting up the turntable. The song started to play and music slowly filled the air between them. Instead of the office desk, he went to sit on the far-end of the couch opposite from Mike. They stared at each other for the duration of the first verse and chorus.

Mike made a non-committal hum, studying Harvey, accessing.

They dimmed down the light an hour ago, saving them from the hash bright lights of the office. Only the lamp at Harvey's desk and the city lights from outside filtered into the room, illuminating their features with a soft glow. They don't speak. They've adapted to the compensable silence that sometimes settled over them after a long-case. This wasn't one of those silences. There was tension bleeding into the gap that separated them, so thick and heavy that it could be cut through with a steak knife.

Finally, finally, Mike spoke to break the stiffness.

"From the start, huh?" Warmth and tenderness was in his tone, somewhat slurred but not completely controlled by alcohol. Mike can handle more than a two-fingered pour. He grinned at Harvey with a dopey, lopsided expression then rested his head against the arm propped up on the back of the couch. He turned his entire body to the side, one leg folded beneath him and the other rested on the floor. He laughed under his breath, cheeks flushed just a tiny bit.

Harvey sipped from his own tumbler and shrugged.

"Free records. I'd be a fool to say no to that." he said, casually, before crashing their lips together. 

**Author's Note:**

>  **The Christmas GiftFic Challenge** _Get a chance to win a Christmas Fic of your choosing!_  
>  I've basically put three bands and 4 albums alluded to in this story. Get them all right, in the correct order in which they are presented, as you get a gift fic from me this Christmas! You'll have to put the name of the _band and the album _. It's as easy as that! Sound good? \:D/ Great! Comment your answers below. 
> 
> ***
> 
> As always, your comments/kudos are reverently salivated upon and read whenever I get into a writer's pinch (that deep void where creativity goes to die). 
> 
> [ Inspire me! ](http://arh581958.tumblr.com/)


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